There'll never be another like Al Davis

The Raiders press release called Al Davis a maverick. If there ever was an understatement, this was it. Davis was a maverick of the old school, from when the word wasn’t a political cliché or a fighter pilot. He was unpredictable, cunning and a hell of a lot of fun to have around.

Al Davis was a lot of things, including a progressive. He hired the first black coach in the modern era, the first Hispanic coach and quarterback and hired the NFL’s first woman CEO. He gave many of his players a chance to play pro football when nobody else would – just think of how many people he picked up off the scrap heap.

He was a champion of the rights of owners, challenging the NFL’s monopoly and asserting the right to move his team as he saw fit. He was the person whom so many clichés originally described: a maverick that did things his own way and just won, baby.

There are less fun details. He shuttled his team up and down the California coast, twice leaving behind a vibrant community of fans. He gave off the sense of a paranoiac, especially in dealings with coaches and the media. And he was a constant thorn in the side of former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle; one biography of Rozelle all but blames Davis for the commissioner’s health problems and early retirement.

Everybody sees the Raiders are Davis’ team. But his contributions to pro football far outweigh just one team. As commissioner of the AFL, Davis led a drive to sign away NFL talent, a move that all but pushed the competing leagues together and ushered in the modern era of pro football.

But by 1970, when the two leagues merged, Davis had long since returned to the Raiders as part owner and head of football operations. The teams he built in that decade are some of the NFL’s most infamous and talented, with players like John Matuszak, Kenny Stabler and Fred Biletnikoff. In the golden years of the Raiders, they were good on the field and wild off of it.

When Stabler’s biography details on training camp with the Raiders, it reads like a Hunter Thompson story: all-day practices and all-night parties, fuelled by pills and booze (Matuszak was partial to Crown Royal and Quaaludes). Indeed, Hunter Thompson once described the Raiders as the flakiest team in pro football and compared Davis to Sonny Barger.

In his seminal book on football, Paul Zimmerman was more blunt: he called Davis a “master spy, master trader wheeler-dealer and rogue.” He detailed the tricks Davis used to pull: changing visiting team’s practice spots at the last minute, have his grounds crew unroll tarps while the visiting team is still practicing and the time he snuck workers into Shea Stadium on the eve of an AFL championship game to build an illegal heating tent on the Raiders bench. Davis cultivated an aura of pushing things to their breaking point, doing everything he could to give his team the advantage.

Every obituary on Davis makes one point crystal clear: Davis personified the Raiders like no other owner, coach or manager ever has or will. The Raiders were his baby, right from the get-go. Everything, from team colours to management went through Davis. As the recent years have shown, he was a control freak. He’d fire coaches with little warning and even less pretext, once burning through three in five years. When the move to Los Angeles gave the Raiders ownership of luxury suites, the Raiders started charging rent to the stadium’s other users.

And culturally, it’s hard to think of another football team that mattered more than the Raiders. When asked why NWA wore Raiders colours, Ice Cube said “it’s a thing where you looked right, it felt right.”

One is tempted to define him on the above, with a glance to his long-term successes: the Raiders once went from 1968 through 1978 without a losing season. They won three Super Bowls with Davis around and went to another in the 2002 season. Doing this misses the point.

I didn’t know Davis, but it’s pretty easy to say he was complex man. A story that paints him as a colorful rogue(“His clothes seemed to matter more than half the players he ever drafted”) looks past how he helped former players. Another that suggests maybe he overdid it (he “often pushed the boundaries of what some people thought was acceptable”), never mentions how often he won when challenging the NFL.

It’s foolish to think about Davis and the Raiders without addressing everything the man did for pro football. What he did with the team almost never happens in culture, especially in so short a time. The Raiders almost exist outside of pro football. Their black and silver are iconic, representing not just a team, but also an attitude.

It cannot be said enough: no owner will ever mean as much and make the same impact on professional sports as Davis did with the Raiders. And that's a shame.

Words from the worst sports city in the world

Grantland, presented by Subway, published a story on Wednesday calling Toronto the worst sports city in all the world. This is a unique distinction which, if I understand it correctly, makes it a worse place to be fan than Tehran, home of Azadi Stadium; worse than Pyongyang, where all soccer is played under the guidance of Fatherly Leader and his invisible cell phones; worse than Yangon, Burma or Freetown, Sierra Leone.

How did it get to be such a bad place? Because the teams lose, mostly. Most of the time, anyway.

After all, it's horrors beyond horrors that Toronto hasn't won anything since 1993 (unless you count the Argos, which Marche doesn't do until it suits his hypotheses). I wake up in the middle of the night with a jolt, sweat-drenched, angry beyond words about Tie Domi on a semi-regular basis. But it also isn't that big of a deal: so what if the Leafs lose every year. The Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908 and life has gone on there ever since. The Jays lost tonight. C'est la vie.

It's worth noting that in his slam on Toronto, Marche gets a few little things wrong. Like who owns the Blue Jays (Rogers, not MLSE), the Argos record, the idea the Leafs haven't purchased any players despite a vast riches (never mind that the NHL operates on a salary cap) or that Toronto never took to Mats Sundin (never mind the ovation he got as a Vancouver Canuck). And it's Marche's opinion that the Leafs best chance at winning a cup was in 2001, but don't forget they made it deeper in the playoffs the next year.

To me, the biggest question about the whole piece is why. Why does he think Toronto is so bad for fans? It certainly doesn't bother me that the Jays are missing the postseason since I'm not the guy from Big Fan. Toronto teams lose; every city has losing teams. When Marche calls out the Leafs for not making the playoffs in six years, one wonders why that's some violation of his fandom. The Pittsburgh Pirates haven't made the playoffs recently either and nobody proposes the "inverted statue" for their owners. And nevermind that Marche doesn't mention the Leafs were a two points - one NHL win - away from the playoffs in 2007.

There's a kernal of truth when he says the city loves scrappy overachiever; the mundane player who shows up on time, all the time. John MacDonald was beloved here and the Jays went as far as to honor Kelly Gruber's number. Every Leaf fan I've ever known - myself included - has adored Wendel Clark, who - lets face it - was a not a strong first-overall pick.

But find me a city where this doesn't happen. Boston, recently named the best sports city in the world, idolized the Lunch Pail Gang teams of the late 1970s. Find me a media market that didn't award David Eckstein the title "scrappy."

He only focuses on the minor teams when they fail, too. The Argos are underwhelming right now, but they won the Grey Cup in 2004. He ignores every season of Toronto FC except their first, when they were an expansion team. Even the Toronto Raptors get shortchanged: they're mentioned twice and their postseasons - 2008 and 2007 - go unnoticed.

If Toronto sports are failing you so completely, Marche, maybe it's time you took a break to one of the world's better sports towns. I hear Pyongyang is nice this time of year. And they have a good soccer program, too.

Canada's team, Canada's sport, Canada's national migrane

It was 35 degrees here the other day. A hot, sticky, humid trainwreck of a day. Summer has arrived and it's too late in the year for hockey, but here it comes, stealing headlines and keeping itself at the forefront of the Canadian sports media scene. The sport has led MacLean's for the previous two weeks, leads TSN's SportsCentre pretty much every day and has provided story after story after story. It hasn't, isn't and will not let up - not yet, not with the Finals just starting.

But the biggest story is Winnipeg's coup of the Atlanta Thrashers. True North Sports and Entertainment's purchase and subsequent move of the team to Manitoba's capital - and the amazingly rapid sellout of season tickets - has moved the media like a, er, Jet. MacLean's cover featured their old logo; the Toronto Sun ran picture of a pin-up girl in hockey paraphernalia above the fold. Each of the op-eds and columns reads like a gushing tribute to a national pastime, but nobody really wants to spoil the party by noting all the problems with the relocation.

The easy one is how tiny Winnipeg is: with a local population just under 700 thousand, it's the smallest market in the NHL, behind even Edmonton. Another is how it's not known as any kind of corporate showcase. If wikipedia can be believed, it's home to companies like Boeing Canada, Old Dutch foods and The Great-West Life Assurance Company; one hopes there's enough of a corporate presence to keep luxury boxes and expensive, lower-bowl seats full.

Let's not forget about the logistics which need to be ironed out. How will their schedule look? Will teams from the Southeast have to fly in for every game? And who's going to broadcast their games? It's easy to assume the CBC will pick up a few weekend games (and probably the home opener) and TSN will pick up a few during the week, but what of all the rest? Rogers Sportsnet looks like a likely source, but their West channel is already home to the Oilers and Flames; is there enough room for a third team?

While we're not forgetting, let's remember a column written by the Globe and Mail's Stephen Brunt, who tipped the nation off to the move with a column on May 19th. Wrote Brunt:

"Sources confirmed Thursday night that preparations are being made for an announcement Tuesday, confirming the sale and transfer of the Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment.

... some months back, the NHL board of governors quietly approved the sale and transfer of the team, pending the negotiation of a purchase agreement between Atlanta Spirit LLC, the Thrashers’ owners, and True North."

Brunt's column was correct in the most broad sense; the Thrashers are likely to move to Winnipeg. And the announcement was even on a Tuesday! Just, as it happened, on a different Tuesday.

There's a difference between being right and being almost right. As I learned back in my J-School days, the only thing you have in this business is your credibility and you get that by being right, if not by being first. Herein lies the problem with Brunt's column: he was wrong. There was no announcement that Tuesday, May 24. The Jets press conference was a week later. And every report, from the AP to the Toronto Sun is saying the board still hasn't approved the sale.

It's cool he was able to jump the gun on the announcement (one wonders if he burnt some source in running the story so early) and it's nice to see the team actually come, but it shouldn't rectify his column which was, essentially, wrong. He suggested that the move was finished, had been "quietly approved", would be annouced on a set day. It isn't, hasn't been and wasn't. He deserves to be held to that.

The Jets moving has also inspired talk from some rather odd angles. The other night, Toronto radio host Jeff Sammut had an hour of open lines asking if Toronto should get a second team, which is an issue nobody in their right mind talks about. Callers spouted nonsense like how Toronto can support up to five different teams, but they never will thanks to Big America. One I especially liked was the suggestion Toronto doesn't win because of American business interests.

Canada likes to think of itself as an independent nation. It is, but it so often seems to be defined in the oddest way possible, which is that we play up how different we are than the US. It's an oddly insecure kind of way to defend yourself: we're better because we're not. It lies through so much of our collective conscience (at least here). From the Avro Arrow, a jet scrapped for a missile defence system (but really because of UA big business) to the NHL (who are willing to throw the game to the wolves to sell it in the US), so much of our collective conscience seems to be about trying to play up how we're not them.

It goes to the Stanley Cup finals this year. For instance, TSN is billing it not as the 2011 Finals, but as Vancouver's quest to bring the Cup to Canada. Never mind that only 16 of their players are Canadian or that Boston has more Canadians on it's roster, this is somehow Canada's team. Never mind that in the past six Finals - from 2004 to 2010, minus the lockout year - there was three Canadian teams. This isn't a case of Canada making a stand against

It's silly. It doesn't feel like rooting for anything so much as it does feel like rooting against something. It's quickly become another political battle: us versus the US. It comes off from benign things like Boston Pizza crossing the Boston out it's name to nonsensical things like the above call-in talk shows. And TSN sure isn't helping when they bill the Finals in such a one-sided way.

How real is too real for athletes?

Social networking has brought fans, writers, bloggers and even athletes closer and more intertwined then ever before. We don’t live in an age where you mail a letter (with self addressed stamped envelope included) to an athlete and maybe receive something back a few months later, but one where we can see people like Chris Bosh shoot home movies or Shaq, Steve Nash or Brandon Jennings microblog on Twitter.

Well, we used to see Jennings anyway.

Jennings twitter account, Bjennings3, was taken down some point over this weekend, likely after an appearance on rapper (and friend of Jennings) Joe Budden’s webcast. There, an unguarded Jennings made several off-colour comments about the Knicks, Ricky Rubio and ESPN analyist Jay Bilas.

But what happened isn’t really a question about wither Jennings’ comments were right or wrong. It’s about if we’ve hit a tipping point, a moment where this free access to (and by) superstars has shown too much of what’s behind the curtain, was it were.

I do think that Jennings should have watched what he said. He’s a public figure and he should have realized that anything he says – even in a private conversation – could come back and bite him.

Granted, watching the video of his interview with Budden gives the impression that Jennings may not have known he was live. But he knew Budden hosted an online show and he had appeared on it previously. On June 22, he tweeted “Out with Joe Budden. Tryin get on Joebuddentv tonight. This finna be a funny night.” To me, that shows he knew Budden had a live show and by calling him, he should have at least thought in the back of his mind that whatever he says could end up online.

Really, though, Jennings made a dumb mistake. A small one. He talked some trash, said some things that I’d assume most every athlete would say in private. Remember, they say Jordan and Bird were legendary trash talkers, Tiger has a sharp, biting wit and Wayne Gretzky once told novelist Mordecai Richler he didn’t read his books because he didn’t have time to read stuff that didn’t happen.

As one writer put it, it’s a confidence thing. That’s how they got to where they are – their confidence in themselves. Of course they’re going to talk smack about the opposition. The question is where they do it. They can say whatever they want in private and in public they’re almost coached to never say anything remotely controversial.

But with the social mediums now out there, where is the line between public and private? Shaq and Charlie V made waves with twitter accounts that further reduced the gap between them and us, the fans. This isn’t somebody blogging through a ghost writing PR agent. And that’s the rub – with less barriers between them and us, it’s easier for them to slip up.

Which is what I think happened to Jennings: he either forgot or didn’t realize that his friend could have been broadcasting the conversation and he said some mildly regrettable things. He slipped up and when he did it was out there for all to see.

It’s regrettable, yes, but it’s also minor. It’s only another anecdote of how athletes need to balance their private lives with their social lives. There’s a fine line between being accessible and open to fans and exposing too much of your private self.

Still, if there’s a lesson to be learned from this, it’s that Jennings – and every other athlete, by extension – is a public figure. Anything they say, even in what they think is a private conversation, can come back and haunt them, be it over the phone, on Twitter or an email.

After all, it’s a lot easier to think about what you’re saying (and who you’re saying it to) then it is to try and un-say it.